More Bad Press For Google.

Google may have once thought they were immune to bad press, that nobody would ever say anything bad about them.

There Will Be More Bad Press –

The reason there will be more? When a company of 13,000 or so employees takes on individual bloggers and shamelessly bullies them into behaving the way they demand they behave or else, that is big news. I was bullied when I was a kid at school. I’m damned if I will let them bully me now that I’m an adult. I’m not the only one who feels that way. It isn’t really about page rank to me – it is about bullying. They could give my page rank back and I would still feel this way. I would still be taking my power back.

I Feel Good, I Knew That I Would-

I have not visited a Google page in almost 24 hours now. Wow, it feels good! How can my decision not to visit Google sites any more hurt them, you wonder? Let’s look at an example.

Visits Count – So Stop Visiting –

I used to visit Google Search 10+ times a day. That’s over 70 visits in a week Google will no longer be getting. If 10 bloggers who visited Google 10+ times a day stop visiting – that’s 100 visits a day right there. That’s 700 visits in a week. You see how the numbers start to add up? What if 100 bloggers who used to visit Google 10+ times a day stop visiting? 1000 bloggers? Every visit counts. Every visit increases their alexa rank, every visit is logged and adds to their traffic. So if you stop visiting, that counts too.

Refuse To Be Bullied –

If you had a kid in school who was being bullied, would you do something about it? Would you speak to the school? And if the school did nothing and let your kid be bullied regularly, would you remove your kid from the school? If you hate bullies, stop visiting Google today.

Your Thoughts?

What do you think about the Big Google Bully? Do you think it is ok for a search engine to bully people and tell them who they can link to and who they can’t? How would you feel if they did it to you?

I posted a damn long comment on this and my e-mail was rejected. damn…

anyway, I’ve never really been big on google anyway, so I’m more in the “don’t care so much” list of people.

I think too many bloggers become too reliant on google pagerank for their business and now feel the pinch. Let me tell you: I don’t support google, but never let your business model be completely reliant on external factors which are beyond control: pagerank is one example of such an external factor.

Also let me state this: I think google are downright anti-competitve – but really, what better could you expect from them? The truth is we believed google to be “good” and we received a big jolt when they’re now suddenly seen as “bad.”

Also I think too many people are getting overemotional about Pagerank and in the process, unintentionally spreading unscientific and subjective opinions as established fact.

It’s just one factor out of a 100 which google use to determine search results. It’s just the most visible factor because google chose to publicize it.

Let’s not get overly emotional about google anyway. It’s a waste of time and the more we write about it (good or bad) the more google will get publicity… which we’re providing for free! And I think it’s a tad over-the-top to believe that google actually gives a whit about what we (a small group of bloggers) write…

Hari – Of course they are overemotional about it. For some people Google have taken away their ability to earn money – they have taken away their income overnight. Yes, it is wrong that advertisers even use PageRank as any kind of guide, but that is the way things are. Google provided pagerank, they allowed people to know what theirs was – which they did not have to do – and thus advertisers chose to use it as a benchmark.

Hopefully those advertisers will stop using it as a benchmark – PayPerPost is one of those intending to do so fairly shortly.

When we are talking about taking food out of the mouths of someones kids by bullying people because they simply mention the word payperpost on their blog that does cause people to get emotional. Bad publicity for free is something I am happy to provide for a company who is out to bully people.

I found one mention of it here on my blog, in a post Blogrolling and commercial promotion – one blogger who works at pay per post and writes about their work there but has never done a single paid post on their blog was put back to a 0. So that makes it fairly clear that Google are specifically targeting posties.

In the absence of any comment from Google about what the heck is going on, that is. Because they could just come out and say “This is why there have been page rank drops” – why can’t they do that? Because it is against the law, what they are doing and THEY KNOW IT!

Precisely Snoskred. People shouldn’t have used PR as a guide in the first place. It’s just a number that is used by google as ONE factor amidst many hundreds.

So while I agree that google have been extremely anti-competitive, I still don’t think bloggers should have put their full faith in PR as an indicator of importance.

After all, even advertisers will have to realize in the end that PR is nothing but a number of no consequence outside of google’s search engines. Ultimately the biggest way we bloggers get traffic is not google, but by social networking and commenting on each others’ blogs. If we realized that and we convinced advertisers of that, people would be less concerned about the whole thing.

I agree that google are being too secretive about it, but in the final analysis can we change anything? If we stop caring, then we win… if we let it affect us in any way, we lose. Do you really believe that anybody at google gives a whit about a few hundred or even thousand bloggers whining about it?

Thanks for linking me, Snoskred! I just realized a little while ago. :) I’m a little slow sometimes.

@Hari,
I have a couple of different online gigs lined up. So paid blogging isn’t my only source of revenue. As a matter of fact, I’ve only recently taken it up. Prior to PPP I had no idea that PR was even important. Wish I would’ve known sooner, because I have a blog that HAD a good PR. Coulda made some money and earned the smackdown that blog received (it’s only crime was being listed in Google analytics with my PPP blog, poor thing).

But you’re putting the onus on the bloggers. It’s the advertisers that made PR a big thing. And it’s the advertisers that pay for the posts. Because of that people are getting emotional. Imagine being a work-from-home-mom who can’t work outside the home because of illness (or another reason) and suddenly having your Christmas/Holiday mad money snatched right out from under you. I was a PR 2 for a split second at PPP and the opps for that pay way better than a PR 0. So, I potentially lost a lot of money that I may have been counting on to pay the light bill and buy presents for the kiddy (many other people were in fact counting on that money). Luckily for me I’m not in that particular boat, but my heart goes out to those that are. I’m just one more medical bill from pulling my hair out over this stuff. Google’s really sticking it to the bad guys, huh?

As of the last few months i have been seeing a lot of bad press in relation to the “bullying” techniques that Google is becoming known for. I myself have not been around long enough to notice anything because honestly I have nothing to contrast it against.
I constantly use Google fro my own searches and 90% of my own traffic comes from them…so I wonder what side i will eventually have to take….although I feel more inclined to start using other search engines at this point oto start exploring other options….